365 Health Strategies (Jan 27):

When you fail at your resolutions, remember this:

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"And when he returned, He found them asleep again, for their eyes were heavy; and they did not know what to answer Him [Mark 14:40]."

When I first meet with a new patient, I give them a health plan that includes a personalized diet, exercise program, medication (if needed), supplements, and sometimes reading and further testing. The person usually sees the helpfulness of the plan and feels real excitement and hope. But, then when I talk with them a week later, I'll often hear, " I haven't started the walking program yet, and I don't know why."

After analysis of their schedule, people will see a way to comfortably fit a walk into their daily routine, they see the wisdom and necessity of that walk if they hope to find optimal health, but they will still sometimes not walk the first step (even though I frequently start people walking only 1/2 mile or about 10 minutes per day in order to take away the excuses of lack of time and energy). Then with an almost blank stare (after not walking for a week), they will say that, "I've been busy (but I know I could have found 10 minutes), but I didn't walk at all...and I don't know why."

If you read today's Bible reading, then you'll see Peter vow to stand by Christ no matter what, and you'll see the other disciples try to stay awake while Christ is praying and sweating blood...yet Peter turns coward and the whole crew can't stay awake even though the Man they call Master asks them to help with prayer during His time of pain and trial.

Here's the point...even men who would later face martyrdom with courage and beatings with a song at times found it hard to honor a resolution to simply stay awake for an hour. So, try not to take all these resolutions about health and walking so seriously that you start to lose respect for yourself and find the whole process heavy and discouraging when you don't get around to doing every thing you resolve to do.

About every two to three months I'll just take a whole week off from exercise. Frank Zane, one of the bodybuilder guru's who has stayed fit into his later years, takes the whole month of January off and has since early in his career. I don't do this perfectly nor do I know anyone who does.

Sometimes, I skip a day of exercise and I don't really know why. But, I don't decide I'm a hopeless case. There are tools that I use to get motivated and reorganized and back on track before a day turns into a year or two.

Hopefully, these Daily Strategies can be a way for you to get back on track. Just open them and read them, try to do the one strategy and the 1,3, 5 plan...and just do your best, restarting every day no matter how good or bad went the previous.